Nationalist African Cinema

Sada Niang is a professor of French at the University of Victoria.

Niang argues that between 1959 and 1973 African nationalist filmmaking, encapsulated in the shortsighted ideological prescriptions of FEPACI (Federation of African Filmmakers), was misguided. This cinema of revolt--Sembene Ousmane is the main figure--posited itself as the voice of the unschooled African masses as opposed to the colonial and the new elite proponents. Yet, argues Niang, the films modeled themselves on third cinema and Euro-American aesthetics. The author showcases how Italian neorealism, gangster and Western films, and the French New Wave (among other genres) influenced African filmmakers who grew up immersed in a B-movies urban youth culture. Because of the bleak reality experienced by the masses, this trend lost its relevance in favor of popular desire for entertainment in the 1980s. To capture the new impetus of entertainment, Niang argues for new critical paradigms away from the dualistic impositions of the earlier days. . . .Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty/professionals; general readers.

• Introduction Chapter 1: The Fepaci, its genesis and its artistic legacies Chapter 2: Neorealism and nationalist African cinemaChapter 3: Nationalist African cinema, The Gangster and the Western Chapter 4: Nationalist African cinema and the French New Wave Chapter 5: The Challenge of Moustapha Alassane: Animation in nationalist African CinemaChapter 6: Mahama Johnson Traoré’s Lambaye (1972): Making the Case for Adaptation in Nationalist African cinemaConclusionBibliography